Read The Peter Principle Online
Authors: Laurence Peter
Creative incompetence is another idea from
The Peter Principle
ripe for development. Peter believed that doing things badly, intentionally, and publicly was the best way for an employee to avoid final placement and, if widely applied, the best way to build organizations filled with competent people. Dr. Peter tells a story about “P. Greene,” a competent gardener who loved his work and had no interest in promotion to foreman. Rather than taking the risk of being offered a promotion (which would be difficult to decline), “P. Greene” intentionally loses numerous receipts and packing slips, which leads to reprimands from the accounting department and causes his superiors to conclude that he has achieved final placement. The popular press occasionally writes about this theme, such as in Jared Sandberg’s 2007
Wall Street Journal
piece on the virtues of “strategic incompetence.” Sandberg reports that a manager named Steve Crawley was assigned to organize an office picnic, but was eventually relieved of the job (which he didn’t want) by intentionally demonstrating deep confusion and incompetence. As Sandberg concludes, “Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do—without ever having to admit it.”
More research is needed to see if creative incompetence is a widespread and effective strategy, but my mind races ahead, regardless. Imagine university classes and management workshops where students learn how to dress in slightly unprofessional ways, or how to give poor and boring speeches (I can hear the professor advising, “mumble more” and “please, please stop looking at the audience”), and how to “forget” to attend scheduled meetings with superiors so they will conclude that you have reached your level of incompetence. If incompetence is inevitable, perhaps we should all learn to master it on our own terms—and stop spending so much time trying to achieve competence, which is, by Peter’s definition, elusive.
As strange as Dr. Peter’s twisted take on organizational hierarchies may seem, the book’s core ideas—and many of the crazy little ideas too—are valid facts of organizational life. After reading this book a few times, I suspect I know why Dr. Peter (and coauthor Raymond Hull) decided to cloak these ideas in such a delightfully weird and perversely funny package.
The
Peter Principle
clashes with piles of serious advice spewed out by an enormous industry of business educators, consultants, and gurus (this was true in 1969 and truer in 2009). Perhaps Dr. Peter realized that these unconventional and contrary ideas wouldn’t spread if they were enclosed in the usual, overly somber business book. The success and enduring relevance of this gem suggests that, regardless of Dr. Peter’s intentions, writing a serious business book disguised as a parody was a stroke of genius.
I
T IS SOMETIMES
difficult for the discoverer of a principle to identify accurately that moment when the revelation occurred. The Peter Principle did not enter my consciousness in a flash of recognition, but I became aware of it gradually over several years of observation of man’s incompetence. It therefore seems appropriate I should present the reader with a historical account of my discovery.
A Clot for Every Slot
Although some people function competently, I observed others who had risen above their level of competence and were habitually bungling their jobs, frustrating their co-workers and eroding the efficiency of the organization. It was logical to conclude that for every job that existed in the world there was someone, somewhere, who could not do it. Given sufficient time and enough promotions he would get that job!
I was not concerned with the oversight, the slip of the tongue, the faux pas, the occasional error which can be an embarrassment to any of us. Anyone can make a mistake. The most competent men throughout history have had their lapses. Conversely, the habitually incompetent can, by random action, be right once in a while. Instead, I was searching for the underlying principle which would explain why so many important positions were occupied by persons incompetent to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of their respective offices.
Rot at the Top
The first public presentation of the Peter Principle occurred at a seminar in September, 1960, when I addressed a group of directors of federally funded educational research projects. Because each participant had written a successful grant proposal, each had been rewarded by a promotion to a position as director of one or more research projects. Some of these men actually had research skills, but this was irrelevant to their acquiring the directorship. Many others were inept at research design and, in desperation, were simply intending to replicate some oft-repeated statistical exercise.
As I became aware of their plan to spend time and taxpayers’ money on rediscovering the wheel, I decided to explain their predicament by introducing them to the Peter Principle. Their reaction to my presentation was a mixture of hostility and laughter. A young statistician in the group convulsed with laughter and literally fell from his chair. Later he confided that his intense reaction was caused by my humorous presentation of outrageous ideas while at the same time he was watching the district research director’s face turn red, then purple.
Tongue in Both Cheeks
Although case studies were accurately compiled and data realistic, I had decided to present the Peter Principle exclusively in satirical form. Therefore, in all lectures from 1960 to 1964, and in the articles that followed, examples with a humorous connotation were used and fictitious names were employed to protect the guilty.
All Rights Reserved
It was in December, 1963, during the intermission of a badly presented play that I explained to Raymond Hull why the actor playing the lead was saying his lines with his back to the audience and gesturing into the wings. This formerly competent actor had found his level of incompetence by attempting to be a combination actor-director-producer. In the conversation that ensued, Mr. Hull convinced me that I was not doing justice to the Peter Principle by presenting it to only a select few who might attend my lectures. He insisted that it should be available to the world in book form. He further suggested that without publication and copyright, someone else might attach his name to my discovery. A collaboration was agreed upon and the manuscript was completed in the spring of 1965.
Victims of the Peter Principle
The final manuscript was submitted to the editors of a number of major publishing houses. The first returned it with an accompanying letter which stated: “We can see no commercial possibilities for this work and cannot encourage you to continue with it. Even with interdivisional sales the publication of this work is not warranted.” The next editor wrote: “You should not deal so lightly with such a serious topic.” Another suggested: “If you are writing a comedy, it should not contain so many tragic case studies.” Still another said: “I will reconsider publication if you will make up your mind and rewrite this as a humorous book or as a serious scientific work.” Fourteen rejection notices and two years later I began to doubt whether the world was ready for my discovery.
A Bit at a Time
It was decided that if the publishing world was not ready for a book then perhaps we might introduce the Peter Principle gradually through several short articles. Mr. Hull completed an article for
Esquire
magazine for December, 1966. Later I wrote about the principle for West Magazine (
Los Angeles Times,
April 17, 1967). The response to this article was overwhelming. Over four hundred letters were received within a few months. Requests for lectures and articles poured in and as many as possible were fulfilled.
The Selling of the Principle, 1968
In March, 1968, the President of William Morrow inquired about the possibility of a book about the Peter Principle. I dusted off the manuscript and handed it to a William Morrow editor.
The book, released in February, 1969, gradually climbed to the number one position on the nonfiction best-seller list where it stayed for twenty weeks. It remained on the best-seller list for over a year and has now been translated into fourteen languages. The book has been required reading in a number of university courses and has been the subject of discussion for many seminars.
The book has also inspired several serious research projects in investigating the validity of the principle. Each research supports the correctness of my observations.
Quit While You Are Behind
Since publication of the book I have had many opportunities to reach my own level of incompetence in one giant step. I have declined many offers to become a management consultant and to conduct seminars for business administrators. Although these proposals were rejected I have not been protected from the Peter Principle. Recently a school of business administration invited me to give a lecture and then scheduled my appearance in no less than five different rooms at the same time. An association of industrial engineers and systems experts asked me to address their convention but misinformed me regarding the date, the time, and the place. Appliances I have purchased still fail to operate, or break down within thirty days, my car is returned from the service shop with mysterious defects, and the government continues to increase the number of regulations which influence my life, while it ensnares itself in bureaucratic red tape.
Death Is Nature’s Warning to Slow Down
As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though
up
is better and
more
is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.
We see men in groups, and most of the human race, struggling for status on a treadmill to oblivion, escalating warfare and weaponry to overkill the population of the world, escalating production of power and products while polluting the environment and upsetting the life-supporting ecological balance.
If man is going to rescue himself from a future intolerable existence, he must first see where his unmindful escalation is leading him. He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving
forward
to a better way of life, rather than
upward
to total life incompetence. Man must realize that improvement of the quality of experience is more important than the acquisition of useless artifacts and material possessions. He must reassess the meaning of life and decide whether he will use his intellect and technology for the preservation of the human race and the development of the humanistic characteristics of man, or whether he will continue to utilize his creative potential in escalating a super-colossal deathtrap.
Man, on occasion, has caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror, and not immediately recognizing himself, has begun to laugh before realizing what he was doing. It is in such moments that true progress toward understanding has occurred. This book is intended to be that mirror.
L
AURENCE
J. P
ETER
August, 1970
A
S AN AUTHOR
and journalist, I have had exceptional opportunities to study the workings of civilized society. I have investigated and written about government, industry, business, education and the arts. I have talked to, and listened carefully to, members of many trades and professions, people of lofty, middling and lowly stations.
I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant.
I have seen a three-quarter-mile-long highway bridge collapse and fall into the sea because, despite checks and double-checks, someone had botched the design of a supporting pier.
I have seen town planners supervising the development of a city on the flood plain of a great river, where it is certain to be periodically inundated.
Lately I read about the collapse of three giant cooling towers at a British power-station: they cost a million dollars each, but were not strong enough to withstand a good blow of wind.
I noted with interest that the indoor baseball stadium at Houston, Texas, was found on completion to be peculiarly ill-suited to baseball: on bright days, fielders could not see fly balls against the glare of the skylights.
I observe that appliance manufacturers, as regular policy, establish regional service depots in the expectation—justified by experience—that many of their machines will break down during the warranty period.
Having listened to umpteen motorists’ complaints about faults in their new cars, I was not surprised to learn that roughly one-fifth of the automobiles produced by major manufacturers in recent years have been found to contain potentially dangerous production defects.
Please do not assume that I am a jaundiced ultra-conservative, crying down contemporary men and things just because they are contemporary. Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.
Macaulay gives a picture, drawn from a report by Samuel Pepys, of the British navy in 1684. “The naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence . . . no estimate could be trusted . . . no contract was performed . . . no check was enforced. . . . Some of the new men of war were so rotten that, unless speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors were paid with so little punctuality that they were glad to find some usurer who would purchase their tickets at forty percent discount. Most of the ships which were afloat were commanded by men who had not been bred to the sea.”
Wellington, examining the roster of officers assigned to him for the 1810 campaign in Portugal, said, “I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.”
Civil War General Richard Taylor, speaking of the Battle of the Seven Days, remarked, “Confederate commanders knew no more about the topography . . . within a day’s march of the city of Richmond than they did about Central Africa.”
Robert E. Lee once complained bitterly, “I cannot have my orders carried out.”
For most of World War II the British armed forces fought with explosives much inferior, weight for weight, to those in German shells and bombs. Early in 1940, British scientists knew that the cheap, simple addition of a little powdered aluminum would double the power of existing explosives, yet the knowledge was not applied till late in 1943.
In the same war, the Australian commander of a hospital ship checked the vessel’s water tanks after a refit and found them painted inside with red lead. It would have poisoned every man aboard.
These things—and hundreds more like them—I have seen and read about and heard about. I have accepted the universality of incompetence.
I have stopped being surprised when a moon rocket fails to get off the ground because something is forgotten, something breaks, something doesn’t work, or something explodes prematurely.
I am no longer amazed to observe that a government-employed marriage counselor is a homosexual.
I now expect that statesmen will prove incompetent to fulfill their campaign pledges. I assume that if they do anything, it will probably be to carry out the pledges of their opponents.
This incompetence would be annoying enough if it were confined to public works, politics, space travel and such vast, remote fields of human endeavor. But it is not. It is close at hand, too—an ever-present, pestiferous nuisance.
As I write this page, the woman in the next apartment is talking on the telephone. I can hear every word she says. It is 10
P.M.
and the man in the apartment on the other side of me has gone to bed early with a cold. I hear his intermittent cough. When he turns on his bed I hear the springs squeak. I don’t live in a cheap rooming house: this is an expensive, modern, concrete high-rise apartment block. What’s the matter with the people who designed and built it?
The other day a friend of mine bought a hacksaw, took it home and began to cut an iron bolt. At his second stroke, the saw blade snapped, and the adjustable joint of the frame broke so that it could not be used again.
Last week I wanted to use a tape recorder on the stage of a new high-school auditorium. I could get no power for the machine. The building engineer told me that, in a year’s occupancy, he had been unable to find a switch that would turn on current in the base plugs on stage. He was beginning to think they were not wired up at all.
This morning I set out to buy a desk lamp. In a large furniture and appliance store I found a lamp that I liked. The salesman was going to wrap it, but I asked him to test it first. (I’m getting cautious nowadays.) He was obviously unused to testing electrical equipment, because it took him a long time to find a socket. Eventually he plugged the lamp in, then could not switch it on! He tried another lamp of the same style: that would not switch on, either. The whole consignment had defective switches. I left.
I recently ordered six hundred square feet of fiber glass insulation for a cottage I am renovating. I stood over the clerk at the order desk to make sure she got the quantity right. In vain! The building supply firm billed me for seven hundred square feet, and delivered nine hundred square feet!
Education, often touted as a cure for all ills, is apparently no cure for incompetence. Incompetence runs riot in the halls of education. One high-school graduate in three cannot read at normal fifth-grade level. It is now commonplace for colleges to be giving reading lessons to freshmen. In some colleges,
twenty percent
of freshmen cannot read well enough to understand their textbooks!
I receive mail from a large university. Fifteen months ago I changed my address. I sent the usual notice to the university: my mail kept going to the old address. After two more change-of-address notices and a phone call, I made a personal visit. I pointed with my finger to the wrong address in their records, dictated the new address and watched a secretary take it down. The mail still went to the old address. Two days ago there was a new development. I received a phone call from the woman who had succeeded me in my old apartment and who, of course, had been receiving my mail from the university. She herself has just moved again, and my mail from the university has now started going to
her
new address!
As I said, I became resigned to this omnipresent incompetence. Yet I thought that, if only its cause could be discovered, then a cure might be found. So I began asking questions.
I heard plenty of theories.
A banker blamed the schools: “Kids nowadays don’t learn efficient work habits.”
A teacher blamed politicians: “With such inefficiency at the seat of government, what can you expect from citizens? Besides, they resist our legitimate demands for adequate education budgets. If only we could get a computer in every school. . . .”
An atheist blamed the churches: “ . . . drugging the people’s minds with fables of a better world, and distracting them from practicalities.”
A churchman blamed radio, television and movies: “ . . . many distractions of modern life have drawn people away from the moral teachings of the church.”
A trade unionist blamed management: “ . . . too greedy to pay a living wage. A man can’t take any interest in his job on this starvation pay.”
A manager blamed unions: “The worker just doesn’t care nowadays—thinks of nothing but raises, vacations and retirement pensions.”
An individualist said that welfare-statism produces a general don’t-care attitude. A social worker told me that moral laxity in the home and family breakdown produces irresponsibility on the job. A psychologist said that early repression of sexual impulses causes a subconscious desire to fail, as atonement for guilt feelings. A philosopher said, “Men are human; accidents will happen.”
A multitude of different explanations is as bad as no explanation at all. I began to feel that I would never understand incompetence.
Then one evening, in a theatre lobby, during the second intermission of a dully performed play, I was grumbling about incompetent actors and directors, and got into conversation with Dr. Laurence J. Peter, a scientist who had devoted many years to the study of incompetence.
The intermission was too short for him to do more than whet my curiosity. After the show I went to his home and sat till 3:00
A.M.
listening to his lucid, startlingly original exposition of a theory that at last answered my question, “Why incompetence?”
Dr. Peter exonerated Adam, agitators and accident, and arraigned one feature of our society as the perpetrator and rewarder of incompetence.
Incompetence explained! My mind flamed at the thought. Perhaps the next step might be incompetence eradicated!
With characteristic modesty, Dr. Peter had so far been satisfied to discuss his discovery with a few friends and colleagues and give an occasional lecture on his research. His vast collection of incompetenciana, his brilliant galaxy of incompetence theories and formulae, had never appeared in print.
“Possibly my Principle could benefit mankind,” said Peter. “But I’m frantically busy with routine teaching and the associated paperwork; then there are faculty committee meetings, and my continuing research. Some day I may sort out the material and arrange it for publication, but for the next ten or fifteen years I simply won’t have time.”
I stressed the danger of procrastination and at last Dr. Peter agreed to a collaboration: he would place his extensive research reports and huge manuscript at my disposal; I would condense them into a book. The following pages present Professor Peter’s explanation of his Principle, the most penetrating social and psychological discovery of the century.
Dare you read it?
Dare you face, in one blinding revelation, the reason why schools do not bestow wisdom, why governments cannot maintain order, why courts do not dispense justice, why prosperity fails to produce happiness, why utopian plans never generate utopias?
Do not decide lightly. The decision to read on is irrevocable. If you read, you can never regain your present state of blissful ignorance; you will never again unthinkingly venerate your superiors or dominate your subordinates. Never! The Peter Principle, once heard, cannot be forgotten.
What have you to gain by reading on? By conquering incompetence in yourself, and by understanding incompetence in others, you can do your own work more easily, gain promotion and make more money. You can avoid painful illnesses. You can become a leader of men. You can enjoy your leisure. You can gratify your friends, confound your enemies, impress your children and enrich and revitalize your marriage.
This knowledge, in short, will revolutionize your life—perhaps save it. So, if you have courage, read on, mark, memorize and apply the Peter Principle.